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I was driving to work from my home on Long Island, to Staten Island. When I crossed the city line in Springfield Gardens, I noticed a mushroom cloud of smoke in the sky. At first, I thought that one of those firetrap horse barns at Aqueduct race track had gone up. Listening to Imus on the radio, they cut in with news that a plane crashed into the WTC. When the skyline came into sight, I saw the first tower just billowing smoke. They were saying it was possibly a small private plane, but the sheer volume of thick black smoke told me, medium to large jet. I remember that the traffic was unusually light. Might have been a school holiday---NYC has a lot of them. I was able to keep one eye on the road, and the other on the building. As you get into Brooklyn, there's a small bridge on the Belt over Gerritsen Creek, which separates Sheepshead Bay from Marine Park. As I was crossing it, I saw what l first told myself was a police or news helicopter, even though it looked for all the world like an airliner in United Airline's livery. Which of course was what it was. Seconds later it went into the south tower, spewing a massive fireball.
From then on I was on autopilot. I still have no idea why I continued into work rather than turn around and head home. But I drove across the Verrazano bridge doing about 90 because I realized how exposed it was if whoever was attacking the city had more planes. FDNY Rescue 5 passed me going the other way---every man on that truck died less than an hour later in the collapse of the south tower.
Now I'm at work, and stuck on the Island because all of the bridges were shut down. A retired detective who worked with us loaded us into his car, and talked his way over the bridge---we left our cars there. He let us borrow his car to get us the rest of the way.
What I still remember is the smell--think of an electrical fire and magnify it 100 times. I could still see the smoke plumes from some of my fishing spots for about 10 days afterwards.
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